Companies Work to Please Spouses

As if building programs to help employees maintain engagement and productivity isn't enough, some companies are now making efforts to engage a more distant demographic: employees' spouses.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, more firms are conducting "special clubs and planning events" to engage workers' spouses in the work done at the company. The effort, the Journal reports, comes as studies show workers come to work happier and more productive when their significant others are happy.

The Journal article says:

"An unhappy partner can make the other partner less effective on the job, research findings suggest. A study published in the October issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family found that men are happier with their lives when their wives are satisfied with the state of their union, regardless of the husbands’ feelings about the marriage. And a recent study in Psychological Science showed that a spouse’s personality can influence his or her partner’s performance at work."